the scene celebrates itself
by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment
Treat yourself to this ten minute explanation of syncopation, using the deceivingly complex rhythmic basis of Radiohead’s “Videotape” as its example. “Videotape” is my favorite of the Radiohead ‘dirge’ songs but what I didn’t realize is that it actually grooves at a very un-dirge-like 155 BPM.
Vox has been on fire with their videos for a while now. I watch them all. Check more of their output HERE.
by M Donaldson // 1 Comment
For some reason (ugh), last night I decided to re-watch the fantastic and fantastically disturbing 2006 film Children of Men. According to a quick search of Twitter, I was not alone.
Children of Men is having a remarkable resurgence — not just because of its tenth anniversary but because of its unsettling relevance at the conclusion of this annus horribilis. There have been glowing reappraisals on grounds both sociopolitical and artistic. It’s getting the kind of online attention it sorely lacked ten years ago, generating recent headlines like “The Syrian Refugee Crisis Is Our Children of Men Moment” and “Are We Living in the Dawning of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men?” As critic David Ehrlich put it in November, “Children of Men may be set in 2027,” but in 2016, “it suddenly became clear that its time had come.”
Children of Men imagines a fallen world, yes, but it also imagines a once-cynical person being reborn with purpose and clarity. It’s a story about how people like me, those who have the luxury of tuning out, need to awaken. This has been a brutal year, but we were already suffering from a kind of spiritual infertility: The old ideologies long ago stopped working. In a period where the philosophical pillars supporting the global left, right, and center are crumbling, the film’s desperate plea for the creation and protection of new ideas feels bracingly relevant.
Tons of spoilers in that Vulture article linked above, so don’t read it until you’ve watched the movie. Children of Men is presently streaming and rentable on various services.
Update: Here’s a fantastic ‘case study’ on Children of Men by The Nerdwriter:
by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment
Here’s a short video documentary on the sinuous story of that song everybody knows and sings and how overnight it went from being a Warner/Chappell cash cow to the public domain. The affair offers some insight into the often complicated worlds of music publishing and rights management.
For years, global music publisher Warner/Chappell claimed copyright of the “Happy Birthday” song, demanding payment for any public performance of it. Jenn Nelson tells the story of her four-year campaign to prove that the company did not in fact own the rights to the world-famous song, whose tune was composed by two sisters in Kentucky in 1893.
by M Donaldson // 2 Comments
Here’s a fantastic find that hopefully won’t get pulled offline anytime soon … it’s a BBC documentary from 1996 focusing on Good Looking Records and LTJ Bukem, right on the cusp of their peak.
Reminisce: People smoking in clubs! All the DJs playing vinyl! Excited that you can make a track in the studio and play it out a week later, but only after the dubplate is pressed! Worried that your record sales will suffer because a shop in Japan is selling cassette tapes of radio sets! One of the hottest DJs in Britain getting “as much as £1000” per gig!
In addition to all that, the doc is a brilliant glimpse into the international DJ and independent dance label scenes in the heyday of the mid-1990s. Many things are different, many things are the same. And business manager Tony Fordham’s adventures in Asia could be a documentary series of their own. Certainly worthy of an hour of your time.